In conventional retailing, there are many intermediaries like wholesalers, suppliers, and retailers which are involved in the selling of fresh fruits to end customers. Firstly, fresh fruits are picked up on agricultural farms and then transferred to local processing centers (LPCs), where the washing, cooling and packaging of fruits takes place. Then, wholesalers purchase these fruits and store them in the warehouses or transport them to the distributors. After that it is delivered to their respective retailers. Finally, these fruits are kept on retailers’ shops and customers comes to buy them.
It is a long, complicated and time-consuming process to deliver fresh fruits from farmers to retailers. To maintain the freshness of fruits it must be transported in cold chain systems which increases the final cost. A large quantity of fruits is spoiled during the transport and cannot be consumed.
However, e-commerce has shortened the supply chain of fruit delivery from farm to end customers. From the end distribution centers (EDCs), fruits are directly transferred for the last mile delivery. Farming enterprise shares the fruit information on e-commerce websites when fruits are about to ripe. Customers give orders on online shops and finally, farm delivers the quantity of fruits demanded by customers.
Supply chain management of fruit e-commerce is relatively easy as there are fewer intermediaries involved. However, there are some issues fruit e-commerce is facing in the fulfillment of online orders. The main problem is to track and control the freshness of different fruits in each segment of e-commerce supply chain. IoT devices are used to keep the freshness of fruits across the e-commerce supply chain.
(1) Farm: With the help of precision agriculture, data can be collected about the farming environment with the help of temperature and humidity sensors, CO2 sensors, photosensitive sensors, soil sensors, and cameras. This is the initial data stored on the servers which will be used to maintain the freshness of fruits.
(2) Vehicle: Vehicles used in the logistics of fruits have cooling and sensing subsystems which are used to maintain the appropriate environmental conditions for keeping the fruits fresh. For maintaining the desired environmental conditions, RFID sensor-based system is used.
(3) Local Processing Centers: From agricultural farms, fruits are then transported to LPCs. Fruits are then washed, cooled, and packaged in the LPC unit. At this stage, fruits are tagged with RFID sensors. These sensors contain information about the growth condition of fruits, an area where it is grown, processing procedures, transportation, designated EDCs, and the final consumer. With the help of RFID information, fruit orders are then transferred from LPCs to EDCs.
(4) End Distribution Centers: Fruits from different LPCs are transported to their assigned EDCs. Traditionally fruits are sorted manually but now RFID readers automatically sort tagged fruits into batches which saves a lot of energy and time.
(5) End Customer: Fruits can be delivered through home delivery or intelligent reception. The most common mode is the home delivery mode in which fruits are directly transported to customers. In intelligent reception, specialized boxes are used that have cooling and messaging systems. When the fruit orders are put in the reception boxes customers receives the message alert on their cell phones and they pick these reception boxes from the stores.
(6) Server: All the data collected are stored on the servers. Data is used to check the freshness of the fruits and to send instructions at every step of the fruit e-commerce supply chain.
E-retailing businesses are doing a lot of investment to make the supply chain more effective and efficient, especially at the last mile delivery stage. Due to the advancement of drone technologies and its increasing commercial use, last mile shipping industry will soon adopt drones to deliver lightweight packages. With the help of drones, delivery time will be reduced, and it will also reduce the delivery cost. The price for an enterprise drones can go up to $10K and can have a range of 12 miles.
As the name suggests, UAV is an Aerial drone which uses no human pilot. It may be controlled with the help of remote control or could be run automatically. Radiant Insight in 2015 forecasted that the Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) markets of $609 million in 2014 will reach $4.8 billion dollars, worldwide by 2021. It has applications in the delivery of packages, oil and gas mapping and in agricultural activities.
Amazon is the pioneer and the biggest e-retailer with revenue of 88.9B in 2014. Amazon already entered the drone market for product delivery and introduced “Amazon Prime Air” and it is now working with FAA for regulatory and safety standards. Amazon is not just working with the drones for home delivery, but it is also working on the feature like “Bring it to Me”. This feature works with the customers’ location identification by GPS and collects the parcel from the customers’ location (Marsh 2015). Currently, drones can pick packages of up to 5 lbs.
Google is also working on drones for the product delivery. In 2014, Google announced that Google X (Research lab of Google) is working on a drone project called Project Wing. As Australia is relatively lenient on the regulations of UAVs as compared to the U.S., Google started their experiments in Australia. Google made a drone design and named it a “tail sitter”, which is a combination of a helicopter and a plane. It also has a little sensor called the “egg,” which is attached to the package and identifies when the parcel hits the ground. The egg then detaches from the package and automatically gets back to the body of the drone.
In an e-retail website, ease of use and usefulness will encourage customers to visit the website frequently and give orders. Online shopping trend is increasing, and home delivery is associated with it. There are many solutions for the E-retailing delivery problems proposed by different stakeholders of the industry. RFID is the key technology used to solve the delivery problems by logistics automation which improve the logistic performance and reduce logistic related mistakes. By taking advantages into account, like reducing delivery time and reasonable cost, the drones are the new future in the e-retailing supply chain. For the adoption of drones in the last mile deliveries, giants of online retailers like Amazon should build warehouses in the near vicinity where people live to make faster and cost-effective deliveries.
By: Ali Imran
“A food professional who likes to write about the food industry related topics
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